Talk:Gordon McSweeney
Why are so many HT readers on this guy's jock? I recently saw someone at the videssos group suggest that McSweeney would have been the Winston Churchill figure the US needed in SA. Never mind that nothing in this guy's character ever remotely suggested he was interested in politics, nor was he morally elastic enough to actually succeed in politics. TR 03:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC) :I always thought he'd make a decent Hitler if the US had lost. That's understandable; there's circumstancial evidence, it's well-known HT originally intended a US defeat early on based on names like Flora Hamburger and Irving Morrell, and of course AH fans will be curious about how a series could have gone differently. :A Churchill figure in SA? How the hell was that supposed to happen? McSweeney would have been useless at running a nation that was free. It really would have been the Battle of the Bigoted Autocrats. I might not even have bothered reading--I'd have to root for Featherston because I'm a northeastern Catholic, so I'd have to be crazier than the CSCT to want to see anything other than McSweeney's fall. But root for Featherston? I'd spend too much on soap--I'd feel the need to take a shower after every scene. Turtle Fan 05:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC) ::Interestingly enough, some AH fans have speculated that had McSweeney lived, he would have become a Pinkerton strike-breaker, and crossed paths with Chester Martin in California. :::That makes sense, I guess. It would be one of very few paths open to him in a GWI-winning peacetime US that allowed him to be violent, and that's kind of his thing, isn't it? Not sure why he'd hate the strikers, but hatred seemed to be something he could turn on easily enough, being a pious Christian gentleman and all. :::Really it would have to be that or soldier of fortune, and most of the groups that would be in the market for mercs in the 20s would have been those with ties to the Entente. He'd be a misfit wherever you put him--which could allow HT to paint him as someone who's just drifting around rudderless, losing job after job, becoming violent and unstable (well, more so than usual) until he comes to a bad end. Then the Democrats maybe use the tragic fate of the demobilized Medal of Honor winner to show how badly the Socialist government sucks at supporting the troops and the veterans. . . . Nah, better to give him the fate he got. Turtle Fan :::They say the he would been a strike breaker to punish "God-less socialists, and those who will not work to earn their daily bread." They say that that's how he would have rationalized it. Not to mention, if he were drummed out of the army due to socialist budget cuts, that would be one way to get even with them. It would have been interesting to see what Chester Martin would have thought of him, as well as the conversations they could have had. Recent Changes: McSweeney was not Irish I rolled back the most recent changes because McSweeney was described repeatedly as Scots, not Irish. TR 18:05, May 14, 2012 (UTC)